Seventeen percent of adopted children under age 18 lived with a householder with a graduate or professional degree, according to American Community Survey statistics available in a new report released today by the U.S. Census Bureau. In comparison, 12 percent of biological children and 6 percent of stepchildren lived with a householder with at least one of these degrees.

In 2010, of the 64.8 million children of the householder under age 18, 93 percent were the biological children of the householder, 4 percent were stepchildren and 2 percent were adopted children.

Adopted children lived in households that had higher incomes and were less likely to live in poverty (14 percent) than stepchildren (16 percent) or than biological children (21 percent).

"Since the circumstances that lead to children living with an adoptive parent or stepparent differ, the profiles of these groups may be distinct from each other, and from that of children living with a biological parent," said Rose Kreider, chief of the Census Bureau's Fertility and Family Statistics Branch. "In this report, we use several data sources to explore the particular characteristics of each group."

Stepchildren:

Of the estimated 4.3 million children who lived with at least one stepparent, 88 percent lived with stepparents who were married.

Stepchildren who lived with unmarried parents were younger than those living with married parents. Twenty-five percent of stepchildren living with unmarried parents were under age 6, while this was true of 9 percent of stepchildren living with two married parents.

Transracially Adopted Children(householder parent and adopted child are of different race or origin groups):

28 percent of all adopted children under age 18 were adopted by a parent whose race or Hispanic origin was different than the child's.

28 percent of these adopted children were Asian or Pacific Islander, and 30 percent were Hispanic (of any race).

Overall, 37 percent of adopted children whose parents were of a different race or ethnicity were foreign-born, compared with 9 percent of their other adopted counterparts.

This information is provided to subscribers, friends, faculty, students and alumni of the School of Industrial & Labor Relations (ILR). It is a service of the Institute for Workplace Studies (IWS) in New York City. Stuart Basefsky is responsible for the selection of the contents which is intended to keep researchers, companies, workers, and governments aware of the latest information related to ILR disciplines as it becomes available for the purposes of research, understanding and debate. The content does not reflect the opinions or positions of Cornell University, the School of Industrial & Labor Relations, or that of Mr. Basefsky and should not be construed as such. The service is unique in that it provides the original source documentation, via links, behind the news and research of the day. Use of the information provided is unrestricted. However, it is requested that users acknowledge that the information was found via the IWS Documented News Service.